darksabre

I'm seeing perhaps a little too much criticism of Johansson given the circumstances. He is definitely raw, but most rookie goalies look like this when they get their first cracks at the NHL. I think his foot speed has looked good, and for the most part he's battling. He'll spend time getting the right coaching and seeing the game at NHL speed and it'll make a difference. There was one situation where he nearly got caught sitting on his butt which was caused by his own teammate standing behind him in the crease for some reason... They also hung him out to dry early on, and I'm glad Krueger didn't pull him because it forced the rest of the team to get their act together. This might be the learning experience these bums need now that they don't have Ullmark (or even Lehner) there to bail them out. It might do the team good to play in front of some washed up hacks and rookies in net for the rest of the year.

This all gets back to the key failure of the tank which was the lack of anything substantial in the pipeline to bring up and play with the tank fruit. Better late than never, but it sure would have been nice if they hadn't put the cart before the horse.

That would be HUGE

CAp gEniUS JAsoN BotTEriLl

He won't though.

Glad they were able to get a win for @North Buffalo tonight!

The awareness of Eichel to hit Vesey. Wow.

For sure. I think his footwork looked good but he was definitely struggling with the speed of NHL talent.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm not the one who very clearly has no idea what he's talking about. Teams don't handle goalie gear. Especially masks. Masks are extremely custom affairs and goalies take care of them on their own. Johanssen likely has a profile on file with whichever company he buys his masks from and if he hasn't ordered a shell with a Sabres paint job on it then it is what it is. Goalies come up with weird masks all the time. Remember when Biron wore a plain white mask in a game years ago because his painted one hadn't come in yet?

Are you okay?

Eh, it's usually the individual goalie who handles this stuff, teams don't do anything with goalie masks. Goalies are picky. Either Johansson hasn't had a Sabres one made yet or it's a work in progress at whichever artist is working on it.

Really didn't deserve to get to OT but I'm glad JoJo got to see a shootout. Now he knows what he's got himself into.

Who knew Lazar had it in him

That zone possession happens because Eichel dumped it in to himself lol

Colin Miller really needs to let those bombs go more often.

This team is just sad. Just incredibly sad.

I feel like it's less about Risto and more about the rest of the team though.

I'm trying to remember the last time a Sabres team started a game in a manner that could be described that way. It feels like they've been the worst team in the league at getting their feet moving for about a decade now.

It's just nice to see goalies coming up through the farm. It's the lifeblood of any good hockey team if you can develop these guys.

Chicago is only interesting to me in the context of "how can Buffalo take advantage of their cap issues" in the off season. I'm not sure I want to use our cap space to take a bad contract, but if it gets us a good player as well... Both their goalies are UFAs....

You never told us you did commercials

I'm mostly joking, but man, it's weird that he's doing this kind of stuff at 34 when he should be losing a step. But maybe he's just got that dad strength or something.